Which browser is the most popular? That depends on where you are

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Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, once the dominant Web browser by far, long ago lost its huge lead. First Firefox ate into its numbers, and now Google’s Chrome has become a solid contender.

But as a new study by Royal Pingdom indicates, no one browser rules globally. In fact, which browser is considered the most-used varies by region. Chrome, Firefox and IE each take the No. 1 spot depending on location, according to data collected earlier this month.

Among the findings:

• Internet Explorer dominates in two of the world’s six regions: North America and Oceania, which is primarily Australia and New Zealand. In North America, the various versions of IE are used 40.4 percent of the time, compared to 24.1 percent for Chrome and 21 percent for Firefox.

In Oceania, IE has a smaller lead: 35.5 percent compared to No. 2 Chrome’s 33.9 percent. Firefox is third with 22.6 percent.

• Europe has the closest browser horse race, with Firefox in the lead with 30.6 percent, IE at 29.2 percent and Chrome at 29.1 percent. This may have to do with the European Union’s insistence that Windows users be given a choice of which browser to use when setting up a new computer. Microsoft has a special version of its OS for Europe that presents a selection screen during setup, and these numbers indicate it may be having the desired effect.

• Chrome has a huge lead in South America with a whopping 48 percent, the largest share of any top browser in any of the regions. IE is No. 2 there at 28.9 percent, while Firefox is 20.8 percent.

• Chrome also is tops in Asia at 36.4 percent, followed by IE at 33.9 percent and Firefox at 24.3 percent.

• Firefox has the lead in Africa with 39.5 percent. Chrome comes in at 29.3 percent, and IE takes third at 25.7 percent. This is the only region where Internet Explorer comes in behind both Chrome and Firefox.

But something very interesting happens when you look at specific browser versions, as opposed to browser types. In all the regions except North America, Chrome 18 is the most-used browser. In North America, it’s Internet Explorer 9 at 20.2 percent. That version consistency is due to Chrome’s silent and frequent updates – the browser is updated in the background, without users ever knowing. With both IE and Firefox, new versions are announced and require a restart of the browser, giving users the chance to say no if they prefer.

Interestingly, the most recent version of IE is not the dominant version in all regions, illustrating Microsoft’s ongoing issue with getting its users to adopt the latest software. IE9 is tops in North America, Europe and Oceania. In the other three regions, it’s IE8. (Microsoft can be thankful that at least IE 6 shows up way at the bottom of the list in only Asia and Africa.)

The Royal Pingdom numbers are in contrast to those generated monthly by Net Applications, a popular source for browser data. There, from data aggregated globally this month, IE has a 53.83 percent share overall.